MultiGPU Update: Two-GPU Options in Depth
by Derek Wilson on February 23, 2009 7:30 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Age of Conan Analysis
While we continue to wait on the DirectX 10 version of Age of Conan, our DX9 tests go on. As we've seen in the past, this game tends to favor AMD hardware.
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Single cards stack up with AMD on top and the Radeon HD 4850 in competition with the GTX 260 cards. With the exception of 2560x1600, the two card 4850 CrossFire setup competes with GTX 280 SLI. The single card Sapphire 4850 X2 2B (with 1GB of RAM per GPU) fairs better at 2560x1600 than its two card counterpart.
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Our performance per dollar metrics show AMD single cards up near the top, but the 4850 X2 2GB shows lots of value and very high performance all the way up to the highest resolutions. The combination of pure performance and value of the Sapphire card is very impressive in this benchmark.
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At 1680x1050, any of our graphics cards will do just fine with the settings we used. At 1920x1200, gamers will want at least a GeForce GTX 280 or one of the Radeon HD 4870 variants. Running smoothly at 2560x1600 with the highest settings requires a multiGPU configuration, and even the 9800 GX2 just doesn't have enough power to make the grade. At the highest resolution, our price/performance metrics show every CrossFire solution to have higher value than every SLI solution.
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SiliconDoc - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link
Oh, I'm sorry go to that new technolo9gy red series the 3000 series, and get that 3780... that covers that GAP the reds have that they constantly WHINE nvidia has but DOES NOT.Yes, go back a full gpu gen for the reds card midrange...
GOOD GOLLY - how big have the reddies been lying? !?
HUGE!
MagicPants - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
I know you're trying to isolate and rate only the video cards but the fact of the matter is if you spend $200 on a video card that bottlenecks a $3000 system you have made a poor choice. By your metrics integrated video would "win" a number of tests because it is more or less free.You should add a chart where you include the cost of the system. Also feel free to use something besides i7 965. Spending $1000 on a CPU in an article about CPU thrift seems wrong.
oldscotch - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
I'm not sure that the article was trying to demonstrate how these cards compare in a $3000.00 system, as much as it was trying to eliminate any possibility of a CPU bottleneck.MagicPants - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
Sure if the article was about pure performance this would make sense, but in performance per dollar it's out of place.If you build a system for $3000 and stick a $200 gtx 260 in it and get 30 fps you've just paid $106 ($3200/30fps)per fps.
Take that same $3000 dollar system and stick a $500 gtx 295 and assume you get 50 fps in the same game. Now you've paid just $70($3500/50fps) per fps.
In the context of that $3000 system the gtx 295 is the better buy because the system is "bottlenecking" the price.
OSJF - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
What about micro stuttering in MultiGPU configurations?I just bought a HD4870 1GB today, the only reason i didn't choose a MultiGPU configuration was all the talkings about micro stuttering on german tech websites.
DerekWilson - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
In general, we don't see micro stuttering except at high resolutions on memory intensive games that show average framerates that are already lowish ... games, hardware and drivers have gotten a bit better on that front when it comes to two GPUs to the point where we don't notice it as a problem when we do our hands on testing with two GPUs.chizow - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
Nice job on the review Derek, certainly a big step up from recent reviews of the last 4-5 months. A few comments though:1) Would be nice to see what happens and start a step-back, CPU scaling with 1 GPU, 2 GPU and 3 CPU. Obviously you'd have to cut down the number of GPUs tested, but perhaps 1 from each generation as a good starting point for this analysis.
2) Some games where there's clearly artificial frame caps or limits, why wouldn't you remove them in your testing first? For example, Fallout 3 allows you to remove the frame cap/smoothing limit, which would certainly be more useful info than a bunch of SLI configs hitting 60FPS cap.
3) COD5 is interesting though, did you contact Treyarch about the apparent 60FPS limit for single-GPU solutions? I don't recall any such cap with COD4.
4) Is the 4850X2 still dependent on custom drivers from Sapphire? I've read some horror stories about official releases not being compatible with the 4850X2, which would certainly put owners behind the 8-ball as a custom driver would certainly have the highest risk of being dropped when it comes to support.
5) Would've been nice to have seen an overclocked i7 used, since its clearly obvious CPU bottlenecks are going to come into play even more once you go to 3 and 4 GPU solutions, while reducing the gain and scaling for the faster individual solutions.
Lastly, do you plan on discussing or investigating the impact of multi-threaded optimizations from drivers in Vista/Win7? You mentioned it in your DX11 article, but both Nvidia and ATI have already made improvements in their drivers, which seem to be directly credited for some of the recent driver gains. Particularly, I'd like to see if its a WDDM 1.0-1.1 benefit from multi-threaded driver that extends to DX9,10,11 paths, or if its limited strictly to WDDM 1.0-1.1 and DX10+ paths.
Thanks, look forward to the rest.
SiliconDoc - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link
Thank you very much." 2) Some games where there's clearly artificial frame caps or limits, why wouldn't you remove them in your testing first? For example, Fallout 3 allows you to remove the frame cap/smoothing limit, which would certainly be more useful info than a bunch of SLI configs hitting 60FPS cap.
3) COD5 is interesting though, did you contact Treyarch about the apparent 60FPS limit for single-GPU solutions? I don't recall any such cap with COD4.
4) Is the 4850X2 still dependent on custom drivers from Sapphire? I've read some horror stories about official releases not being compatible with the 4850X2, which would certainly put owners behind the 8-ball as a custom driver would certainly have the highest risk of being dropped when it comes to support.
"
#2 - a red rooster booster that limits nvidia winning by a large margin- unfairly.
#3 - Ditto
#4 - Ditto de opposite = this one boosts the red card unfairly
Yes, when I said "red fan boy" is all over Derek's articles, I meant it.
DerekWilson - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
thanks for the feedback ... we'll consider some of this going forward.we did what we could to remove artificial frame caps. in fallout 3 we set ipresentinterval to 0 in both .ini files and framerate does go above 60 -- it just doesn't average above 60 so it looks like a vsync issue when it's an LOD issue.
we didn't contact anyone about COD5, though there's a console variable that's supposed to help but didn't (except for the multiGPU soluitons).
we're looking at doing overclocking tests as a follow up. not 100% on that, but we do see the value.
as for the Sapphire 4850 X2, part of the reason we didn't review it initially was because we couldn't get drivers. Ever since 8.12 we've had full driver support for the X2 from AMD. We didn't use any specialized drivers for that card at all.
we can look at the impact of multithreaded optimizations, but this will likely not come until DX11 as most of the stuff we talked about requires DX11 to work. I'll talk to NVIDIA and AMD about current multithreaded optimizations, and if they say there is anything useful to see in current drivers we'll check it out.
thanks again for the feedback
chizow - Monday, February 23, 2009 - link
Oh and specifically, much better layout/graph display with the resolution selections! :)